Dark Chocolate and Ginger Cookies

Sometimes, my bakes are meticulously planned and involve me buying ingredients weeks in advance.

And then there is the secondary bake, which is what happens when I have bought ingredients for a specific recipe, haven't used them up and want to get rid of them somehow.

Sometimes this ends up with me buying yet more ingredients to use up the ones I already having, thus entering a vicious circle of interminable baking. Although I would question to what extent any kind of baking can be referred to as vicious.

Happily, this was not one of these occasions. This recipe was partially inspired by the Hummingbird Bakery's double chocolate cookies recipe and mostly inspired by me having an awkward amount of dark chocolate that I needed to use up and having almost none of the ingredients to make the aforementioned cookie recipe. It makes 20-24 cookies.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

You will need:
225g dark chocolate
50g unsalted butter
2 eggs
170g light brown soft sugar
¼ tsp vanilla extract
½ tsp baking powder
85g plain flour
2 tbsp diced stem ginger, in the syrup it comes with

1. Preheat the oven to 170C and whisk together the eggs, sugar and vanilla in a bowl until fully combined.

2. Set the dark chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water (the water must not touch the bottom of the pan) and heat, stirring occasionally, until fully melted.

3. Add the chocolate mixture to the eggs and sugar, whisking all the time. Fold in the ginger. 

4. Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixture and drop about 6 equal spoonfuls of the dough onto a lined baking tray, spacing them up to 2 inches apart to allow for spreading.

 

5. Bake for 10-15 minutes until glossy and cracked on top. Leave to cool on the trays for a few minutes before scraping off and cooling on a wire rack. Or just eat them.

These cookies are quite gingery, so you might want to tone them down a bit if you don't enjoy the kick. You could replace the diced ginger with chocolate chips - if you did you'd be closer to the original Hummingbird Bakery recipe.

Personally, I like these cookies how they are - rich, fiery and chewy.

I really must do some more savoury baking soon, before I and my victims - sorry, I mean friends and colleagues - start to get diabetes. 

Bye for now,

Ellie 

xxx